Wave speed-discharge relationship from cross-section survey

This paper tackles a practical problem in flood routing, the estimation of the speed of propagation of the flood wave. It is well known that this prop agation speed varies with the discharge in quite a complex manner for natur al rivers. The principal innovative step in this paper is the identificatio n of a relatively simple conceptual model of river geometry to obtain two m ethods for generating realistic wave speeds from a standard river cross-sec tion survey. These are verified against data from two rivers in the UK, sho wing good agreement with wave speeds deduced from long-term flow records. T his work is expected to be of particular value in building forecasting mode ls of ungauged or partially gauged river systems, as it removes the need fo r long concurrent records to estimate wave speeds.